These men were generally good soldiers and fared quite well against most cavalry they faced. It was against French and Polish cuirassiers, however, that they found their lack of a backplate to be a massive disadvantage; at Wagram, for example, they were simply massacred by their French counterparts for lack of a backplate. Earlier in the same battle, though, they had done extremely well against repeated attacks by Saxon cavalry and against allied infantry, showing that while their want of a full cuirass could prove deadly, they were still a formidable opponent for most enemies.